﻿Milo dreamed. Once again dreaming of lying beside Lenore in the laundry van, of the empty dark bedbeside alonealone that returned again and again after the drugs and the absinthe were long overspent; she, snorting softly like a mother hog, stray wisps of her ravaged tutu stirring gently on her body's breezes.

He'd thought, when he was a student, that if and when he finally slept with a woman every night, he would leave behind the sudden wake-up-with-the-whole-world-wrong-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach' feeling. He thought she'd be a warm shield against the encroaching, fearful dark. The countless, wideawake-nightmare three a.m. horrors that couldn't be laughed or cried off as high or withdrawal.